Ozwitness

It was not that many years ago that life was very different before computers. As a High School teacher I remember the time when the only computer in the school was in the office, and the teachers were sent on a course to learn about them.

Before that, almost every job had to be done by hand and records were kept in paper files.

Thousands of people were employed as clerks. Nowadays the computer has replaced all these workers and my son, who is a mine surveyor, tells me that the huge trucks used to transport the iron ore in the mines are driverless, as are the trains which deliver the ore to the ports. Even the drilling machinery in the mines is controlled by people hundreds of miles away in an office in Perth.

Recently, reports tell us that men’s jobs are easier to automate than women’s jobs because they often involve social empathy, interpersonal skills and creativity, such as receptionists, midwives, nurses and child-carers.

Out of seven hundred occupations 12 were found to have a 99% chance of being automated in the future, and many hundreds more were in the 80-90% chance of automation. These jobs are fast disappearing!

Robotics are rapidly replacing human workers, and each robot in places like car factories, replaces 5.6 workers. It has been suggested that robots should therefore be taxed and the funds used to retrain or financially support those replaced. In modern factories today it can be hard to find a human worker among all the busy machines, all controlled by computer technology.  

Farms, which in days gone by employed 15 men,  now manage with one or two men and huge, costly, computer controlled machinery. Eventually it is thought that governments will have to step in to implement a guaranteed basic income for all those redundant workers. Well, they may think that, but God, who does not dwell in time or space as we do, knows better. In fact His word shows us that human life is not really about materialism, mass production and profits, which has led to huge gaps between rich and poor, pollution, oppression and even war. Human life is really about relationships, families, our environment and our purpose.

That is why a huge change lies ahead at the coming return of Jesus Christ. The earth itself will be totally restructured at His arrival. Rather than 10% of its land area being currently arable and 90% taken up with huge deserts, mountain chains and,  concrete and snow, the figures will be reversed so that 90% of its increased  land area will become fertile and productive, and climate change will bring rain in due season everywhere. Gone will be huge factories and industrial pollution. Materialism will be replaced by true education which will lay emphasis on relationships and the laws which bring real success, peace and happiness in life.

Life will become much simpler, more attuned to families and much smaller scale craftsmanship rather than heavy industry. Without high technology and computers, huge numbers of jobs will be created in both industry and agriculture. Following organic natural farming methods the smaller mixed farms where both animals and crops are raised, will become much more productive, our impoverished soils will be restored, the food grown health giving once more, and most people will retain a connection to the land rather than live a life divorced from reality in some huge metropolis.

The result will be happy families who work together, as they used to do long ago, a simpler but richer lifestyle where people live together in smaller communities in peace and prosperity, in a world which will gradually be restored to Eden like conditions.

Isaiah 41:15-20,  ‘Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the LORD, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel. When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together: That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the LORD hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.’ 

Isaiah 30:23-25, ‘Then shall he give the rain of thy seed, that thou shalt sow the ground withal; and bread of the increase of the earth, and it shall be fat and plenteous: in that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures. The oxen likewise and the young asses that ear the ground shall eat clean provender, which hath been winnowed with the shovel and with the fan. And there shall be upon every high mountain, and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.’

Last weekend in the ‘Weekend Australian’ appeared an article by associate editor Chris Kenny which revises the points I have been proclaiming for some years. The article was entitled ‘Dance With An Enemy We Dare Not Name’ and here is a condensation – “

The Islamist extremists are winning. Victory is unlikely and, in any event, a long way off but their immediate aims are being achieved, if not in the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, then at least in the democracies of Europe and the Western world.

The signs are ominous in Australia, where 15 years after the Bali bombings this is the enemy whose name we are too often too timid to mention. The extremists have us second-guessing the cultural superiority of our Western Liberal democratic model and have conjured a collective and misplaced guilt among us about the treatment of Muslims. From the fundamentalist preachers to the bloodthirsty terrorists, the ultimate goal of Islamist extremists is simple: global islamic dominance. To achieve it they need to weaken and harm the West, fuel Muslim grievances and assert their cultural power through demographic changes and political influence.

They loathe our tolerance, freedom of expression and plurality. Yet skilfully use these Western strengths against us as they subvert our ways by convincing many of us that we are to blame for their atrocities. We  can see the Islamist success in shaping this narrative around us.

The Palestinian cause is used as a constant irritant. Just this month…. we saw the UN General Assembly vote by an overwhelming majority to condemn the US for recognising the obvious reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. And after I argued last week that Melbourne’s Flinders Street horror was an Islamist terror attack – – because that was the motivation sited by the Afghan-Australian attacker – Anglican priest Rod Bower described my comments as “”poison”” that could “”drive fragile psyches over the edge””. See what he did there – it is always our fault  …… After the Martin Place siege in Sydney and the Flinders Street attack,  police and media downplayed terrorism but talked up mental health issues …. As bollards go up in our cities are we to believe this is to protect us from the mentally ill or the drug addicted? ….

But if the attack is perpetrated by a Muslim immigrant who specifically sites Muslim grievances, the public ought to be told immediately that there are indications of a terrorist motive ….

When Curtis Cheng was assassinated in an Islamist killing at Parramatta the police hierarchy told the public … that there was nothing to suggest terrorism yet the attacker had yelled “”allah akbar”” at the scene before he was shot dead.   …

The triumphalist and resentful elements of the faith that are shared by the mainstream but taken to violent ends by the extremists… This is the core of the debate … do we need to accept that the islamist  aim of disrupting our society by targeting infidels and innocents cannot be truly defeated until the ideology itself is exposed, confronted and eradicated ? “”

I think most of us can see that the state is hiding from the facts and cannot face up to the problem which is apparent all over the world. Most Muslims desire peace and play down the Koranic texts which inspire violence and terrorism, but they are there, and that is the problem, but the real reason that the West is experiencing this in our midst, is found in the Bible, in the book of Leviticus, 26:14,16. ‘But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments…I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror…’  

We have rejected God’s Laws, even denied God exists, and we are paying the penalty.